ICELAND & THE NORTHERN ISLES

Welcome to Hamburg. You have 1 night to explore the city.

Located between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, Hamburg is a wealthy port city that has never lost its ties to maritime trade, still proud of its old title as a free Hanseatic city. Beyond the Reeperbahn, Speicherstadt (Warehouse Town) is worth the walk for its cobbled streets and turrets. St Michaelis church, rebuilt after fires in 1750 and 1906 and again after WWII bombing, is the city’s finest Baroque landmark, and the 360-degree view from its tower takes in the port, the Alster lakes and the five spires of Hamburg’s skyline.

Lerwick, the port where your MSC cruise ship awaits your return, is very much the focus of Shetland’s commercial life.

All year, its sheltered harbour is busy with ferries and fishing boats, as well as specialized craft including oil-rig supply, seismic survey and naval vessels from all round the North Sea. In summer, the quayside comes alive with visiting yachts, cruise liners, historic vessels such as the restored Swan and the occasional tall ship.
Behind the old harbour is the compact town centre, made up of one long main street, flagstone-clad Commercial Street, whose narrow, winding form, set back one block from the Esplanade, provides shelter from the elements even on the worst days. From here, narrow lanes, known as closses, rise westwards to the late Victorian new town. The northern end of Commercial Street is marked by the towering walls of Fort Charlotte, begun for Charles II in 1665, burnt down by the Dutch fleet in August 1673, and repaired and named in honour of George III’s queen in the 1780s.
Exhibits at the Shetland Museum, in a wonderful purpose-built waterfront building, include replicas of a hoard of Pictish silver found locally, the Monks Stone, thought to show the arrival of Christianity in Shetland, and a block of butter, tax payment for the King of Norway, found preserved in a peat bog.
MSC Northern Europe cruises also offer excursions to Scalloway, once the capital of Shetland, which however waned in importance throughout the eighteenth century as Lerwick grew. Nowadays, Scalloway is fairly sleepy, though its harbour is busy enough.
The town is dominated by the imposing shell of Scalloway Castle, a classic fortified tower house built with forced labour in 1600 by the infamous Earl Patrick Stewart, who held court in the castle and gained a reputation for cruelty and corruption.

Reykjavík is mirrored in the waters of its bay as your ship sets anchor in the port. The quays along the seafront host shops, live music venues and cafés, an easy first taste of the city.

Take a stroll down Frakkastígur to Lækjartorg to see the Sólfar, or Sun Voyager, a steel sculpture by Jón Gunnar Árnason shaped like a Viking vessel with its bow pointing north. From there the historic centre around Aðalstræti and Suðurgata holds the remains of some of Iceland’s earliest dwellings, and Hallgrímskirkja church is worth the walk up for the view alone.

Geothermal energy runs through daily life here, and the city’s spas are proof of it if you want to swap sightseeing for a soak before the ship sails on.

With a second day in Reykjavík, this is the one to head inland on the Golden Circle. Þingvellir National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2004, sits where the Öxará river drops into the Öxarárfoss waterfall near Almannagjá, the largest rift in the park.

From there it’s on to Gullfoss in the south west of the island, where the Hvítá river falls in two stages, 11 metres and then 21 metres, into a narrow canyon carved through the plateau. Nearby, Strokkur erupts every few minutes in the Haukadalur valley, alongside Geysir itself, the original geyser the word comes from, with eruptions that can reach over 100 metres.

When your MSC cruise to northern Europe takes you to the north western point of Iceland, you will cast anchor at Isafjordur, a small town of ancient origins.

In Isafjordur you will find the oldest standing Icelandic house, built in 1743. In the periphery of Bolungarvík, the northernmost location in the western fjords, one can instead visit Ósvör, once a fisherman’s village and now an open air museum.
The past re-emerges also in the old town of Nedstikaupstadur, where Icelandic and Norwegian merchants first, and then British and German ones, would meet in the mid-15th century in the bay of Isafiord. Here, in the second half of the 18th century, Krambud (the shop) was built, that was converted in the 20th century into a private home; as well as Faktorshus (the farmers house); Tjoruhus (the tar house) and Turnhus (the tower house) used as warehouses and fish processing centres.
While on your MSC cruise to Northern Europe, if you want to get an idea of how Icelanders used to live in the past, try an excursion to Vigur, literally the “spear-shaped island”. Its waters host a great deal of sea lions who feed on marine birds such as the puffin, the black guillemot, the aggressive arctic tern (who can attack people if it feels threatened) and the common eider.
Another spectacle of nature is the Naustahvilft, the “troll’s seat”, a large depression shaped like a half moon in the flat mountains that surround the Isafjordur fjord. Legend has it that it was created by a troll caught by the sunlight sitting on the mountain with its feet in the water.
Whether you believe in the legend or more likely in a valley dug out by the ice during the last ice age, try this brief but intense excursion, it is certainly worth it.

When you set ashore from your cruise ship for a vacation in Akureyri, you should take an excursion to Lake Myvatn. To get there you will pass through Eyjafjördur, where you can enjoy a splendid view of the city port.
The first worthy stopover is in Godafoss, here the waters if the Skjálfandafljót form a 12 meter tall waterfall. According to the legend, in the year 999 or 1000, one of the Icelandic rulers proclaimed Christianity as the official religion of Iceland and hurled the idols of the Nordic gods (Odin, Thor and Freyr, to which probably the waterfall was previously dedicated) in its waters.

A stained glass window of the church of Akureyri (Akureyrarkirkja) depicts this legend. As you continue along the Icelandic wild nature, with its incredible variety of colours, varying from the bright green meadows to the red minerals erupting from the depths of the island, one reaches the pseudo-craters of Skutustaðir, generated by underground vapours produced by an eruption 2500 years ago.

From here one can reach Dimmuborgir, an incredible labyrinth of lava, where amidst peculiar formations rises the Kirkjan, a natural church with two pointed-arch portals and, inside, real chapels with altars. You can end your visit at the Viti crater, known also as the Inferno, one of the many mouths of the central Krafla volcano.

If you feel like tackling the steep climb from its internal lake, you can also enjoy a relaxing hot bath. Here you will also find the Askja, an immense caldera that extends for 50 sq.km., a desert of lava and the finest sand resembling moon dust: this in fact was where the astronauts of the Apollo 11 trained for their lunar landing.

Before returning to Akureyri, if you feel curious, you can stop to visit Santa Clause’shouse, about ten kilometres south, a delightful Christmas toy shop, with the largest Advent calendar in the world.

Located between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, Hamburg is a wealthy port city that has never lost its ties to maritime trade, still proud of its old title as a free Hanseatic city. Beyond the Reeperbahn, Speicherstadt (Warehouse Town) is worth the walk for its cobbled streets and turrets. St Michaelis church, rebuilt after fires in 1750 and 1906 and again after WWII bombing, is the city’s finest Baroque landmark, and the 360-degree view from its tower takes in the port, the Alster lakes and the five spires of Hamburg’s skyline.